New Year, New Books!

Our first round of CerritoBerry book groups launched this week. This round we have four titles, Love That Dog (Creech), The Phantom Tollbooth (Juster), Clayton Byrd Goes Underground (Williams-Garcia), and You Don’t Know Everything, Jilly P. (Gino). Groups meet on Tuesday and Thursday during our regular reading period and enjoy active shared reading, discussion, analysis, reflection, and writing about the books. The goal is for most of the reading to be done in class as a group, but occasionally students may be asked to take the book home to complete a reading assignment or writing prompt. Book groups are an excellent forum for modeling expressive reading aloud, taking turns in discourse about the story, characters, and author’s craft, and exploring topics presented in the story beyond the scope of a typical classroom lesson that is introduced or central to each story, such as ASL in Jill P.  Students practice skills such as learning to quote passages in their written reflections and practice public speaking when they present to the rest of the groups about their book at the end of the novel. 

Book groups are always a much-anticipated activity in CerritoBerry and a wonderful shared experience. You can extend the learning by discussing the book at home. Prompt your child to summarize the part they read that day to keep you up-to-date on the plot, but please remind your child not to read ahead to prevent spoilers. 

If you are in need of new reads for 2025, students brought home the most recent Scholastic Book Club catalog this week. Refer to this ParentSquare post if you are interested in ordering books through Scholastic and earring CerritoBerry some points for books in the process.